Letters to the Editor

Letter: Dumpster fire summer

If you read the ADN website these days, you will quickly conclude that our state has become one big raging dumpster fire. The typical summer stories of fishing reports and road construction have abruptly been overwhelmed by stories of layoffs, lawsuits, credit rating downgrades, strikes, civil emergencies, financial exigency, surging homelessness, programs ending and people leaving the state.

Across the state, families are being thrown into chaos as jobs end, plans for the future evaporate, promised scholarships or benefits are revoked and businesses face uncertain futures. What is amazing about all of this is that this dumpster fire was purposefully started by our own governor and kept going by a handful of legislators who refuse to put out the fire.

The majority of the Legislature looked at data, listened to experts and constituents and crafted a reasonable budget that cut some state funding, but kept major state services functioning while providing a reasonable dividend. It wasn’t the budget I would have created, but it was reasonable and responsible.

At the last minute, the governor threw the state into chaos with totally reckless and irresponsible vetoes that made deep unnecessary cuts that seem tailor-made to cause the most pain and hurt every sector of the the economy. Even worse, the timing and size of the cuts made it impossible to craft deliberate plans to deal with the cuts.

By all accounts, the governor and his staff never bothered to analyze the impacts in any serious way — they just started a dumpster fire and walked away, leaving the rest of us to deal with the fallout.

— Alex Prichard

Fairbanks

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